


My Way or the Highway

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Day 3, Gen, My way or the highway, Whump, whumtober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26794912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: "He was one of those my-way-or-the-highway types. What can I say? I picked the highway."At the moment, though, Mac is beginning to regret that decision. Throwing himself out the back of the van where his kidnappers were keeping him seemed like a good idea at the time.Not so much anymore.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 66





	My Way or the Highway

_ "He was one of those my-way-or-the-highway types. What can I say? I picked the highway." _

At the moment, though, Mac is beginning to regret that decision. Throwing himself out the back of the van where his kidnappers were keeping him seemed like a good idea at the time. They definitely wanted him to hold as a bargaining chip to force Riley to hand over the flashdrive of data she stole from them before she corrupted their servers with a very nasty virus. Now she has the only data on the locations of multiple terrorist funding organizations. Mac would like it to stay that way.

Thus, working his hands free of their sloppy cuffing job, forcing open the back of the van, and jumping.

When he came up with this plan, he’d been hoping to be able to dust himself off, (probably having to ignore a decently nasty case of road rash) and flag down another car or vanish into the streets. Instead, he’d been met with a distinctly deserted stretch of road, and he’d picked a bridge over a spring-meltwater flooded river as his point of exit. To make matters worse, the driver had noticed the door opening, and swerved to stop, meaning Mac got thrown out the back of the van at an angle that definitely snapped his ankle; he heard the crack when he hit the pavement. 

He knew if they caught him he was going to be in a lot of trouble, and he’d chosen the lesser of two evils, limping to the edge of the bridge and throwing himself over the side into the raging water. 

He honestly hadn’t fully expected to survive it. But somehow, he’d managed to stay afloat in the angry flood long enough to get a grip on a branch and pull himself out onto shore, at least two miles below the bridge.

If he’s right about what river that was, he’s in the heart of protected wilderness right now, which means the guys hunting him, if they’re even bothering to, are going to have to do it on the foot trails. He’s probably not in immediate danger from them unless he does something as dumb as starting a signal fire. 

But damn it, he really wants to do just that. The sun set an hour ago, long before his clothes dried from his dunking in the river. He keeps telling himself if he stops shivering, he’ll take his chances with the fire, but it seems like the early spring weather is determined to be just warm enough to have prevented that so far. 

He huddles a little further into the makeshift shelter he’s cobbled together from branches and anything he could reach. He’s managed to drag himself far enough away from the river that he’s out of the visible floodplain, but he doesn’t want to get too far from it in case his team is looking for him. He knows he lost his comm somewhere in the water, and when they ping his last location as the bridge, they’ll follow the river downstream. So he doesn’t have to move far, which is a good thing, because his ankle is killing him. 

He’s pretty sure if he wasn’t here, he’d be locked up in some creepy villain lair being tortured on camera to persuade his team to hand over the flashdrive. This is better. Or at least that’s what he’s telling himself, feeling his crudely splinted ankle pulsing in time with his heartbeat, and wishing he would in fact just go numb from the cold so he’d stop feeling the bruises.

His whole left side, in addition to his busted ankle, is scraped and bruised, and he got knocked against some pretty hard stones in the river. He managed to keep from inhaling too much water, but he can feel it crackling in his lungs. 

Maybe he just traded one beating and waterboarding for another. 

When he hears something crackling in the brush, he tenses, wrapping his fingers around a thick branch he’s been saving for just this reason. It’s not the best defense, but he might be able to take someone...or something...by surprise.

The steps sound light, like they’re carefully avoiding disturbing the forest floor. Mac frowns. The guys who took him didn’t seem like the wilderness-savvy type. 

He lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding when he hears a familiar whisper. “Hey, Hoss, you around here?”

“Jack?” Mac whispers in relief. “I thought you were a wolf.”

“Maybe I am.” Jack moves aside the branches Mac used to form his makeshift shelter. “When the full moon pops out from behind those clouds, I’m gonna grow pointy ears and start howling.”

Mac laughs weakly, Jack’s weird attempts to make him smile are always entertaining.

“How’d you find me?” He asks as Jack begins assessing the level of damage.

“Well, lucky for you, this section of the river’s being monitored by a geosynchronous satellite checking in on some endangered subspecies of deer that use it as a water source. Picked up another endangered species today. Accident-prone geniuses.” 

Mac can’t believe that for once, luck was on their side. He reaches for Jack’s arm to help him stand, then winces.

“You’re not going anywhere on that ankle, hoss.” Jack scoops Mac into his arms before Mac can protest, and he’s too tired and cold to hold back the happy little hum of contentment as he settles against the warmth of Jack’s chest. “There’s a clearing about a mile from here and Matty’s sending in a medevac as we speak.” 

“The guys from the van…”

“Taken care of already,” Jack says. “They made enough noise a blind man coulda tracked them out here. There’s a tac team en route with the chopper to pick them up where I left them. They’ll be seeing the wrong side of steel bars about the time you’re seeing the right side of a hospital.”

Mac groans. He knows he needs medical attention, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it. He wants to go home and curl up under a pile of blankets, not be cooped up in a hospital bed with too-thin blankets and a barely-useful gown. 

“I know you don’t want to be there, but I promise, Ri and I’ll spring you as soon as your ankle’s set and you’re not currently in danger of becoming a Mac-sicle.” Jack chuckles. “Pretty sure she’s already hacked into the hospital records. No one wants a repeat of Moldova.” 

Mac just nods and curls in a little closer to Jack’s chest. He can rest now. He’s safe. 


End file.
